My First Flat Track Race - Hell on Wheels Racing

The stars aligned last weekend. Editor-at-Large Jim Downs is heading to Miller Motorsports Park for the AHRMA race and Dodge was gracious enough to let us review their Dodge ProMaster van on the trip. We also picked up a couple Honda dirt bikes we loaned to our friend Nick Zano. Add that all up to the very same weekend as the Hell on Wheels MC Hot August Nights flat track race and it was meant to be.

This is Tommy on the Honda CRF125F during practice. Photo by Belinda Kiser.

So I had a pair of bikes, a Honda CRF125F and a Honda CRF150F, along with a van to haul them. So we figured we'd take a break from our Hipster Bike Build and our secret Kawasaki project to go racing.

Put on by Hell on Wheels MC (HOW)—which is pretty much a guy named Meatball and his family—it’s one of the most grass-roots, laid back, but fun racing event you’ll ever attend. My first major assignment for RideApart was covering the Hell on Wheels vintage motocross event, but outside of that I knew few riders and even less about the operations.

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So I, along with my wife and dog, set out in the van for Perris Raceway. We also woke up her cousin Tommy, who is a motocrosser that visits Perris and 29 Palms regularly. I’d been bugging him for weeks to get involved in flat track and somehow he said yes. Probably because there was a “First Timers Class," and although I had an extra bike he still insisted on bringing his Honda CF450F in stock motocross form.

I was riding the CRF150F, wearing some Alpinestars Oscar gear.

The flyer said that the gates opened at 2pm, with very little information after that. Our friend and current writer, Bryan Woody Wood, emailed me the link to pre-register—beyond that I knew nothing of what to expect. I didn’t know when racing would start and Hell on Wheels MC’s listed phone number is no longer in service.

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We arrived in the middle of the pack, as a dozen or so racers had already set up camp. Clapped-out campers, bitchin’ street-freak vans, ProMasters, pickup trucks new and old—the pits were filled with a more interesting mix than the races to follow. We unloaded and found ourselves with about three hours to kill.

How We Did It

We were loaded for bear with our hi-top, long wheelbase Dodge ProMaster. It was excessive, as we didn’t really need three bikes, but we still had enough room to carry two more. The big van allowed us to make a little house away from the sun.

We had a cooler with plenty of water and Gatorade, an air gauge and air tank, which we never used. We also had a couple of hand tools, which again we didn’t really use, although we used them to remove the front brake lever (something we should have done at home anyway). We brought our gear bags and two small chairs, along with the big tent. With our brand new Hondas, we practically needed nothing in terms of at-the-track prep. We could have dropped the tire pressure, as occasionally I needed more front bit, but I honestly just kept forgetting to do that.

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For normal flat track racing, you can't use a front brake—simply removing the front lever is generally enough. Why? First off, you don’t really need a front brake as it’ll just wash the tire out from under you. Second, this type of racing involves riders racing bar-to-bar, and if another rider’s bars hits your brake lever, it can cause you to wash out mid-corner.

Classes

HOW offered a First Timers class, which I encouraged Tommy to run in with me. It was an open-CC class, so he opted for the 450, naturally.

We started off with practice, followed by a heat race then our main race. Running two classes was just right as it allowed enough down time for a water and wet rag on the head to keep a heat-stroke at bay, and it was also enough time to not become bored.

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Our First Timers class consisted of a couple of young people on a variety of new and old bikes: a girl in full road race leathers and a Japanese guy on a borrowed Speed Merchant Harley-Davidson Sportster set up for the flat track.

We rolled up to the line for our heat race—I was lined up beside the Sporty. I looked up at him, down at my little 150cc, and back. I then looked at Meatball, who was lining us up. I was looking for some sort of reassurance from him that I wasn’t about to get trampled in the first corner. None came.

When the light turned green, the three 450 motocross bikes, including Tommy, jammed to the first corner, cutting me off in fourth.

That’s essentially how the heat race finished out, me in 4th and with Tommy finishing second. The rider of the Sportster didn’t speak much English, but after the race I asked him about his first experience and he told me, “Slippery, very slippery.”

Our main race started and ended in a similar fashion, but Tommy barely scratched out the lead this time. It was a last lap, last corner pass racing against two young motocross racers from Two Dicks Racing. I finished middle of the pack, with the three motocrossers a half-track ahead and the rest of the field a half a lap behind.

This was only a third of the total entries for the mini class.

For our mini race, there were more entries than I’d ever seen before. Worried that I may lay it down and be crushed by a pack of riders, I waited in the back in order to see the skill level of the riders before our main. Out the gate, I had a hard charge for the middle of the pack as Tommy, who staged on the outside of the front row on the 125cc, had broken off into the front group.

I battled slowing through traffic. I cut on the inside of a young kid on a white vintage bike, although I couldn’t make out the model from the fiberglass body work. He scraped the inside as I grabbed a handful of rear brake to keep from taking him out. As we rounded the apex, I went back on the gas to find that he didn't do the same. I ran over his boot as he started looking to see what had just grabbed him. Like Jaws pulling you under, it was a quick moment of shock for him. I gave him an apologetic gesture after the race. I was unaware of how I finished, but I assumed mid-pack. Leaving me only partly satisfied with my performance.

My finish in the heat race proved to be more beneficial than I thought, as Tommy started dead center of row two of the A main, and I was up front for the B main. In case you don’t know anything about flat track, the most desirable spot is the inside of the front row—moving outward gets worse. I was staged at almost the middle of the front row, so I was okay, but not great. If you're on the inside you have the ability to hold your line, just so long as you aren't cut off. My start resulted in a little of both.